important question about lye

[Sauboon]

When measuring lye and the recipe calls for 4.76 oz of lye should it be rounded off to 4.8 oz?

 

[renaissancemom]

measuring in grams can be more precise when working with odd numbers, especially if you are going to round. I would round to 4.75oz. because it's closer to your actual number. if you are superfatting, which you most likely are, it is okay to be off by such a small margin; but try to be as close to your number as possible.

 

[IanT]

There are approxamately 28.3 grams per ounce, thus at 4.76 oz of lye you would be using 134.708g and at 4.8oz of lye youd be using 135.84g. It may not seem like much but it could make a big difference in your soap being lye heavy. I agree with mom... beeeeeeeeeee careful... always use as precise a measurement as possible and round as close to the number as you can get. It wont be the end of the world if you mess it up... could turn into a valuable learning experience about how to rebatch soaps (if you havent already had experience with rebatching.)

 

[Overthemoon]

I would definitely sooner round down with lye than up. Rounding up with water is fine, same with the oils but lye, lye I would just want to be as precise as possible.

 

[xyxoxy]

If you use Soapcalc, measure in grams, and always include a superfat of at least 5% then rounding up or down to the nearest 1 gram won't make a noticeable difference.

But certainly rounding down is the safest choice... basically you are just adding a tiny fraction to your superfat.